Many people suffer from vision disorders in which one eye is weaker than the other, leading to problems with binocular vision, motion-perception, depth perception, and spatial acuity. If left untreated, a person's brain may increasingly rely on the stronger eye for information, further reducing the effectiveness of the weaker eye until, in some cases, the weak eye becomes non-functional.
To treat such disorders, a physician may block or obscure the view of the patient's stronger eye to make the weaker-eye work harder (i.e., force the person to rely more on the weak eye). With his or her vision obscured, the patient may engage in activities in which good vision is necessary for a prescribed period of time, in order to train the weaker eye. The improvement in eye strength of the patient's weak eye is generally proportional to the amount of time that the patient spends training the weak eye. Because such training takes many hours to effect a change in the patient, the training routine typically takes place under the patient's discretion and without professional supervision. One drawback of such an approach is that a patient may occasionally avoid or forget the training.
3D display systems have existed in a variety of forms for many years. Generally, these systems convey a sense of depth by presenting slightly different perspectives of the same image to each of a viewer's eyes. One typical 3D display process involves presenting two superimposed images simultaneously from a single display screen with the superimposed images modified to be separable from each other through the use of optical filters. Different filters may then be placed in front of each of a viewer's eyes (e.g., in 3D glasses) so that the viewer sees one image with the left eye and a different image with the right eye. If the two images are slightly offset views of the same scene, the viewer will instinctively combine the images into a 3D representation of the scene. Conventional systems have employed color filters (such as red/cyan tinted glasses), type of light-polarization (i.e., planar, elliptical, linear, etc.), or polarization angle as characteristics for filtering images using filters placed near to the eyes.
More recently, displays have been developed that can present 3D images without placing filters near the eyes. Such systems, known as autostereoscopic displays, hold tremendous potential for bringing 3D display technology to a variety of untapped applications. Emerging uses for 3D technology include medical imaging, entertainment, diagnostics, education, and defense, among many other fields.